encounter
by cruelzy
Summary: There are several gods under this city, but you are looking for the sun.
1. requiem

The walk to the station is brief, as usual.

City noise seemed to be a language by now: flashing colours of traffic lights, persuasive yells of street marketers and screeching tires mingling with the quick steps of the crowd; your own steps conditioned, automatic. Watch for bicyclists here. Avoid the pothole there. You question just when you'd become a part of the dialect itself, but the concept quickly becomes irrelevant as you near the rapidly swelling station.

Of course, there are no seats left when you board.

It's long after the train kicks into gear and leaves the station that you even find a spot to stand. Typical. Eyes closed, your fingers curl up under your jacket to greet the heat of your armpits. There is an abnormal flush of rowdy people on your route today, and you are not pleased in the slightest by the consequences accompanied. Barely enough space was specifically irritating on any day, but even that was leagues better than no space at all.

You crack open an eye. A lanky man down the row to your left clings to the train attendee, barely five feet tall and adorned with a permanent scowl on her face. Some poor dad in the opposite direction is desperately trying and failing to keep his kids on a leash as they run unbidden between and round strangers' legs.

_Noise_.

And the humidity, hot, sticky, congregation of sweating bodies all touched and packed together like sardine. An elbow presses into your ribcage. You give your irritation one glance over, decide that you don't actually care and recline your head against the cool wall of the transport.

* * *

PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND IN YOUR SEATS. WE ARE EXPERIENCING A MALFUNCTION.

* * *

"Oh my God."

You open your eyes.

What?

Grogginess slows your senses down to near halt. The effort to wrangle your consciousness back to coherence is a familiar strain, though confusing. Just when had you fallen asleep?

You're not sure exactly why you had drifted off, much less how long for, but the reason for your returning alertness grows rapidly obvious. The air, previously thick with the hum of morning talk and pleasantries, has become deathly still. Every single person is staring upward. You dazedly follow their gazes.

The train's roof has been cleanly ripped off.

Everything sharpens into abrupt focus.

A creature stands ridiculously tall above the blatant destruction, closing in on a size perhaps two thirds a skyscraper. The roof, now only an amalgamation of twisted metal and protruding wires beyond recognition, is crushed like playdough between its hands. You are _wide_ awake—rivers of glistening scales hissing and scraping against one another affront your eyes, your gaze crawling down an undulating spine that blocked out daylight, drowning everything below in the pitch black of long hulking shadow. Bare chested and bare legged, the (monster) is nothing but stretches of rubbery skin flecked with dirt and slime. Somewhere between incredulity and fear did each individual watch in silence as a horrifically muscled arm carelessly tossed the crumpled roof away, as if it were a lone soda can.

Oh, you think.

Someone lets out a choked scream, and just like that, the freeze is broken.

The train, or what was left of it anyways, explodes into motion: people scrambling over seats, anywhere they could go to escape. Shouts pick up in desperation. Directly behind you, there starts the unmistakable sound of crying.

"Yes, scream!" The monster's mouth opens in an awful laugh to show rows of clicking sharp teeth. Its face is mostly scar tissue, and the smell that drifts down to plug the space reminds you of month old dry rot. The unmistakable piss-stained air from the terrified passengers is decisively not helping. Seven unnatural eyes blink down, one after the other, the sound visceral as they pry apart. "Cower before me worthless insects!"

Jesus.

Hands are on you now, sweatslick and urgent, bodies squeezing by to evacuate through the doors—when had they gotten those open?—for hope of safety. The crowd rolls, a strange combination of altruism: snatching up kids, working together to make sure no one is injured; and utter selfishness: fists knocking others aside to get themselves to freedom, 'every man for himself' displayed loud and clear. You snatch your bag tight to your breast. Twist and stuff your phone into your back pocket for safe keeping.

And then twist again, because something _strange_ had definitely just blipped past in the corner of your eye.

Sounds and colours rush by in a dizzying loop. Time picks up fast and sudden like the snap of a drawn roll of measuring tape and _what holds the degree of separation of great importance? One might argue the shape of consciousness, might have laid maps out bare for analysis on the memories, vivid constructs enough to saturate character in the brevity of dizzying illumination. The reach of fingertips, the occurrences which leave indestructible vestiges in a mind's eye, never forgotten, so layered over potent, twice, thrice, lifetimes into multitudes of canyons of recollections.You—_what_—you sink into your breath. You look into the panic, the panic laughs back, you soak up the offered chaos like an oilskin, you feel without all the feeling, you sink into yourself and you twist round again. Thoughts drain out of you enter you scatter from you. Boot of a child stamped through an anthill. Incorpreal. The flash in the corner of your vision sears across your heart eternallybecause _a sharp whistle slices through your skull.

You _screech_.

Clutching your head, you bend in half and gasp around your tongue at the threatened dryheaveal.

That wasn't of any human origin, no, it was the sound of something moving so fast it rendered the laws of physics a child's plaything and pierced the very atmosphere.

(There.)

By the time you regain any sense of sanity, the monster is already defeated.

Shreds of flesh splatter outwards, any and everything else vaporized in the sheer magnitude of force that had been acted against it. A draft of wind barrels into you from the impact, sending your hair flying around your face.

And suddenly, you see the sun.

The silhouette of the figure smolders—a cape fluttering in the wind, bright yellow burning into your retina in all of its glory and heat. Awe follows the shine and fills the hollows of your eyes, spills over your cheeks into your open mouth like ichor. A head turns slowly. The raised fist lowers soft as whiplash, glove steaming red _redred_ as blood.

"Out of the way!"

Someone shoves you from behind to save their own skin. You fling an arm out against the wall, ankle twisting something fierce as you trip over yourself. Your head snaps back up.

The figure is gone.

The falling box car, however, is not.


	2. world one

You arrive at the burial site at exactly eleven thirty am. Morning drizzle becomes proper rain by the time you clear the trees, and it's with a tepid flush of ire that you unfold your umbrella and grimace at your mud-caked shoes. Fortunately enough, the well worn soles are highly accustomed to such abuse.

You're late.

The weeping men and women that meet you only add to your relief that you'd swerved the main procession by a mile. Showing up at all was an honest miracle on your part, prefaced by an hour worth of stink-eye at the bathroom tiles until the hissing steam drew out the last dredges of morality under your skin. But it's not as if you're missing anything. You are used to death.

The priest must have said something particularly riveting just then, because the crow-necked woman closest to one of the coffins bursts into a fresh bout of tears, pulling you from your thoughts. Her keening waterworks rise and rise, echoed by the flitting birds in a mimicry before falling flat to sink into the wet earth.

You sigh softly through your teeth.

Three people died last week.

Your blatant apathy is probably undeserved, if not altogether disrespectful, but you cannot help it. You knew none of the victims. The invitation that had come in the mail was less an invitation and more of a societal guilt-trip, stamped pretty in red and overflowing with please and thank you's. Contents within spoke of individual funeral services but a communal burial, something about togetherness and coming together to fight as a whole, and by the thousandth 'we sincerely hope' you crumpled the paper and resigned yourself to attending the mourning of strangers.

It would've been better if this had been closer to home, like a friend's distant great grandmother or whatnot, as the main purpose there would be support and obviously not grief. Nevermind the fact that you don't have any friends. Why are you here again?

"If there are no more goodbyes for the deceased, we will now lower the remaining casket into the ground."

Like clockwork, the crowd falls silent. Apart from the rhythmic patter of rain, it is quiet as several hands scatter soil and throw flowers into the grave.

Black and white faces smile up at you from the pamphlet in your hand. One is a little girl, no more than five. You glance down at the gravel, imagine the frail, grey body pressed half-decomposed under layers of hardpacked earth and something slowly curls in your chest.

A pity.

Right on cue, a frigid blast of wind changes direction and knocks the umbrella straight out of your loose grip.

You dazedly watch it tumble down the path and into the bush, metal ribs abruptly bending to a sharp snap. For a moment you can only stare. Nature does not wait with you, chords of stinging rain whipping unapologetically against your exposed skin. You raise a hand to shield your face and exhale, trapped between disappointment and relief. The plastic handheld was cheap anyway. Several others must have witnessed your misfortune, however, so it would have to be accepted if you simply left—and there is a long shadow draping itself over your shoulder.

Your pulse thrums in your throat just as the heels of your feet dig stiff into the wet mud. Startled, you reign in your heart with a short hiss of disbelief, dragging your eyes from the black umbrella above your head down the arm attached to it, then up, _up_ to a pair of stern bunched eyebrows. Your newfound saviour's frame is wide and broad, towering threateningly over your smaller stature and setting off every single stranger danger instinct you have in your body, your hair standing on end. There was no malice to be found in his posture, at least none so easily seen, but confusion was only one step away from suspicion and his unexplained proximity was dangerously straddling the line. With the tilt of the umbrella more than half of him must be drenched. He looks completely unbothered by this.

"Won't you rust?" is all you can say once your mouth has caught up to your brain. Almost immediately, you wish you could put your foot in the former.

"I will not."

You squint, equally as curious as you were worried for the purse at your side. "You weren't on the train."

"I am here with my master," he answers, neither affirming nor denying your claim.

Not like you needed him to. Frankly, he would have stood out like a sore thumb.

"Well," you say. You're really not one for idle conversation, and it's sad how quickly this is already beginning to strain. At least he wasn't trying to rob you. "Did they know any of the deceased?"

Tall and Serious blinks. "No." He does not elaborate.

"Okay," you say. "Okay."

Cyborgs must not totally be exempt from the pleasure of social awkwardness, because after approximately six minutes of nothing he speaks again. "Did you attend the viewing?"

With a fresh wave of recoil, your mouth pulls downward."No."The two of you lock eyes for just a second, sharing a brief moment of solidarity. It ends just as soon as it started.

Why would you? People were better remembered as they were in life, not as a putrefied corpse, caked in makeup and swollen to twice the size. Not only was the act a waste of time, but it was also unnecessarily cruel. You link your fingers together, observing the fierce reminder of mortality waving handkerchiefs and clutching purses only a few feet away, holding each other closely as the last song climbed into the melancholy air.

Quite finished with your sudden and unwelcome introspection, you tuck the pamphlet into your pocket and turn fully.

Bright eyes meet yours once more, equally as curious. His face is grounding and alien all together, a little too smooth and a little too ageless, mouth a firm unassuming line below the calculating gaze. And those eyes. Bleeding molten, black where the whites should have been but not like the shade, rather like the void space in-between the stars.

You tilt your head. He mirrors the action languidly, catlike. You take in the angle of his nose, and the corn-yellow of his tousled crown, and the brush of the long grass against your ruined skirt, because come tomorrow you will forget him, and kindness is so very hard to find lately.

"You're cold," Tall and Serious says.

You rub at your cheeks, chasing away any excess moisture. He raises a large hand, a draft of hot air pushed out over your numb bitten fingertips—and oh, how easily you already forgot he was not all human. You mutter your thanks. He nods once, then goes quiet.

Time wanes and seeps out underneath your feet. The shuffle of parting guests. The sun a wine river through the overcast, splitting the sky and sending the sycamore trees up in flames.

When you return home the stolen umbrella is a dark stain against the white of your wall. Unwrapped, unfinished in the same way the stranger had come and go, left to rest by the door and just as well intentioned for return.

You set your bag on the counter and wash up for dinner.


	3. out in

She was never going to hear the end of this.

"He _what_?"

A glance from the manager over pharmacy quieted her voice to whisper, but the vitriol was still audible. "You say that as though this is not half your fault."

Sen's eyes bug wide open. Mibuki can already feel herself going grey.

The conversation stalls when an overactive family of eight pile up to the register, hands loud, kids louder. More after. Work continues.

Two hours later, because she was never going to hear the end of this, "you said he was a good one."

Mibuki let loose a sigh so deep it yanked Sen's spine out to straighten. "I said he _might_ be." She wet her fingers on the damp paper towel under the monitor, turning her face to the side just enough for Sen to glimpse the exasperated slant of her mouth. "I know you normally don't do relationships. I was trying to find you a sweetheart, promise."

The honesty hanging off her shoulders must be unmistakable. Whatever. She knows Sen has already forgiven her.

Still. "I really don't do relationships," Sen repeats.

"I know honey."

"But you said that this one was nice so I did my hair and I waxed, _waxed_, and I found that red dress, that cute one from last year that needs the specific wash, and I went all the way ta' the dry cleaner, I never go ta' the dry cleaner."

"I know honey."

"Boldness is one thing but propositionin' me? We'd met for like a lick of ten minutes. Guy was a total creep. And I've met creeps, Mibuki. Remember I told you about the party for my 19th when my cousin's ex roomie strolled right out the bathroom drunk—"

"—off his rocker with his boxers round his ankles," they drone simultaneously. Sen pauses.

"You've told this story at least thirty times," Mibuki rolls her eyes. She could use a smoke. "I—"

Another customer and the air clicks to PG-13 like a switch. The employee brand smile easily plasters itself onto Mibuki's face for the boy in front of the conveyor belt, who is promptly rummaging around in a pants pocket. Immediately, the smile falters.

It's _him_.

"I am here to discuss sale discounts for the following items."

There it is! The headache coming on!

_Patience, Mibuki._

"Of course," she says politely, ever aware of the manager's death stare drilling holes into the back of her scalp. Every week. Every damn week the little brat showed up with a foot long list of produce and several mail booklets of coupons to accompany.

He stood there each time and listened intently as she explained that no, that is not how coupons work, and yes, half of those had expired last year, and no, she did not have time to leave my work space to properly explain to him how market discounts worked. And yet he kept coming back. On account of that bald one that was with him the first time she's sure, goal to impress or something of the like. Young love. Nothing like it.

Speaking of.

Mibuki grimaces at the sheer wave of adoration coming from the register left of her.

Sen was absolutely starstruck, as usual (pretty boy hero). Maybe Mibuki would have been as well, once upon a time. She tries to recall her passions at twenty years old. (ha!) What a lifetime ago. With age comes the tempering of juvenile lust, just as wisdom makes the hair on her chimmy chim chin increasingly wary of the so called hero-folk. The Hero Association was only three years old after all, still practically toddling around and giving absolute power to child-gods.

That smoke. She really needs it.

"Excuse me?"

Thank Allah.

The brat stops somewhere in paragraph four, twisting his head round. Mibuki tips forward on her toes belatedly to see who dared to interrupt him.

Rifling through the cheap gums in the narrow aisle, cloudy and swoopy in long drapes and spiked boots. The white lights high above in the roof arch and twist to capture a face that showed no such emotion—a coat of paint tripled over, a fresh sheet of snow lain overnight, a layer of bricks in sand that will not be blown by the gale—pure and unadulterated at the mouth of an endless expanse of nothing. Long, deliberate movements almost disturbing along the angled limbs, austere with the edges.

"Sorry for the intrusion," they say, looking straight up into his face without resignation.

Next, a lengthy spot of wait that transcends awkward. Neither of the two seem to see it as such. Mibuki marvels at the spectrum of social ineptitude and quietly thanks her normality.

There is no recognition in The Demon Cyborg's eyes. "Do I know you?" he says, not unkindly.

"No," they reply, just as straightforward. "But we have met."

The Demon Cyborg does not ask when. The newcomer does not give a reason. They cock their heads, the two sliding off each other like identical bars of soap. She feels as though a bystander witnessing the beginning of a storm.

"I have something to return to you," finally says the other, stretching themselves out like a wearied marionette before beginning to unload their cart onto the belt. Mibuki pinches open a plastic to bag the items.

The Demon Cyborg blinks hard, like coming out of a dream.

"Hello," He realizes all at once.

"Months ago," They reply, lifting a satchel of pears. "Impressive."

Mibuki crawls through the groceries as slow as possible, trying not to make her eavesdropping painfully obvious. It is altogether useless. The Hero is aware of everything at all times and the tired one has eyes as sharp as a razor blade.

"I do not need it," concludes The Demon Cyborg. "Have a good day."

"Okay," they say.

He turns to leave.

Mibuki's mouth open closes.

Wait. _Wait_.

"What's that in your hand?" She asks quicker than she has ever asked anything in her entire life. What apparent wonders a fresh obsession for strangers does to sharpen the reflexes. If only she was this fast during her last job interview.

The recipient of her word-diarrhea raises one palm and opens it to reveal—

_Allah, the universe is really revolving about us today._

"I was going to try a discount for the detergents package," they say.

The Demon Cyborg 'hmm's. His eyes spark like cinders in a roaring furnace, circles of gold equations barrelling around his pupils at the speed of light. All of them know what is about to happen next.

"I will be back Thursday of next week at this current time on account of Master."

_Yes_. Oh how to borrow Tatsumaki's shift on Thursday afternoon?

"Sure."

Then three are two.

Sen groans far off, having too just experienced that hurricane of chemistry and mourning her own non-existent relationships.

The customer narrows a considering look at her.

Mibuki burns with the grin. "Cash or card?"

* * *

**This**** is likely the only chapter from a different POV. Nevertheless, a lot of fun to write.**

**Edit: Since I have been told this may have scurried past the right amount of intriguing confusion and into straight nonsense here is a summary: ****A point of view through the eyes of Mibuki, a regular cashier, and her later interactions with Genos and Reader. That's it, really.**


	4. proximity, recollection

Genos is strange, you decide.

That's his name. Genos. It had taken substantial effort, but once you'd proved your fluency in everything coupon, and your mediocre-but-still-better-than-average marketing efficiency altogether, you'd finally managed to wriggle the moniker out from underneath him.

"I understand. Next. The specific grouping of items."

"The benefit is more for the business than the buyer, Genos. You know how it is—just, alright, let me start over—"

You worried, at first. You hadn't tried to befriend any other individual since The Incident, and as such, you found that you were sorely out of practice. As relationships go, you may as well stumble 'round on legs like a newborn fawn.

To begin: there is a time to talk and a time to be subdued, but when, and at what point? What were the spaces between speech? Learning to listen to silence. Thinking carefully about your outstretched hands. Did social cues count for nuance? What if unexpected eye contact meant something else for cyborgs? Every word was suddenly deliberate and well-crafted. How could you lie to someone who could track your very heartbeat in your throat?

Your stream of thought flows on, but most of its unfinished pieces fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion.

Genos himself sure does not make it any simpler. Where you are soft spoken, he is stoic. His grave kindness jarrs dispassionately against your quiet anger. Everything in you that is wingless and touches the ground, jaded and apathetic, is met with fire and flight and overwhelming justice. Genos is good. He can not be blighted. He will not be held down. He is a stark reminder of everything you are running from.

The two of you get along splendidly.

Today is Thursday, and so he is seated across from you at the café as he is every Thursday, one leg crossed over the other and a diligent, piercing stare vigilantly roaming your surroundings while you sort through the afternoon's assortment of print out capitalism. The sky is turning orange. But the light on his face is pink, shining through the glass panes and bouncing off the table to cut across his figure like a block of solid colour.

Genos is the kind of effortlessly beautiful that crashes traffic. There are at least ten people staring from around the café, and assuredly exactly one crisp camera click. You are used to this.

He's still speaking over your head, but the string of phrases is mere rumbling white noise at this point. All you hear is "sale sale blah blah—"

"Genos," you cut him off. Prior to this you have tried to change the subject several times to no avail. You switch tactics and toss all subtlety out the window. "We don't know much about each other, do we?"

A barista passes by the foot of your bag to change his shift without a single glance. Every worker here knows neither of you ever order anything.

"That's alright," says Genos, nonplussed. You half expected as much. A side effect of talking to the guy for weeks: you get how Genos thinks. And currently he is thinking along the lines one would a business partnership.

Which is ridiculous. For a person who'd apparently once calculated the exact speed of a missile to stop it seconds before it crashed into the town square he sure lacked any amount of common sense.

"Well it isn't," you say firmly, surprising Genos and surprising yourself and probably surprising the entire planet. Where you garnered such backbone, you don't know, but let it not be said you aren't going to grab it by the horns. "I want to know more about you."

Genos turns his head minutely at that, sharp features settling into something unreadable. You wait, rubbing a thumb over the textured polish of the wooden table. If he doesn't wish to be vulnerable, then that's fine. You of all people know firsthand what it's like not to trust easy. However...you still need some kind of a grip to know where you are in this. Whatever the hell you're really doing here.

You try to keep the gentleness on your face but the force behind it must leek through because Genos's entire body language changes.

"Years ago," he begins without warning, "when I was a normal human being, a cyborg attacked my town out of the blue. It had most likely gone out of control due to a failed body modification that generated a brain irregulari—"

Genos stops just as suddenly as he'd started. A haze ripples over his face, as though he'd just recalled something he'd forgotten, slowly lighting up his eyes.

"Twenty words or less." He purses his lips. "I am on a mission to find and defeat my sworn enemy, the rampaging cyborg, and avenge my family's lives."

The sudden influx of information renders you speechless for a long moment.

Right. He used to be fully human, so he…what? Became that what he hated?

What does one say to that? What should one say to that?

You lick your dry lips tentatively. He's still watching you. Waiting for an answer, obviously.

"Where does being a hero fit in all that?"

Genos narrows his eyes, scrutinizing your expression closely as if to discern the truth in you. You stare back. Any condolences you could offer would fall false and lifeless in comparison to the dull shock still rooting straight through your bones into the chair. You have an inkling he wouldn't care much for pity, anyway.

Avenge, he said. But really, wasn't it revenge?

"Why not?" He counters eventually. "I will extinguish any evil I face in my path along the way."

And against everything, a part of you wants to laugh. That was a matter of fact answer if you ever heard one. So very Genos.

The humor loosens up your nerves, so the next words out of your mouth come light and gentle with tease, "As much as I loved hearing you divulge your deepest secrets, when I said I wanted to know more about you I really just meant, oh I don't know, your favourite dessert? Hobbies?" Your eyes crinkle sweetly at the sides. "Any books you read lately?"

You expect surprise. You don't expect him to look quite so bewildered.

"Well," you inhale quickly, then deeply. "I'll start." Your lashes flutter briefly against your cheeks. "The real world has crossed mountains and seas. Fate has for a brief and unexpected moment brought us together in this room, but beyond that it speaks no more."

There is no more knee-jerk reaction to his own lack of reaction on your behalf. Haven't been for some time. You can hear the questions in his silence.

Smiling, you tug on a stray hangnail. "Sōseki Natsume, The Three-Cornered World. I finished it last night."

Genos glances down at his hands, and you follow, sweeping your curiosity to your chest and busying its remains with the gleam of silver-black on slender fingers.

"It has been a while since I've…read." Genos speaks, equally as quiet. "Simply for the sake of, in the least, and not in pursuit of certain knowledge." He looks at nothing in particular, almost pointedly. "Many comforts became inconsequential in achieving my goal."

And sales are somehow important? you want to ask, but hold your tongue. "Okay," your voice comes out carefully instead, meeting him where he's at. "Nobody can train all the time, not even you. What's something you find yourself doing much of lately?"

A blip in the conversation again as he thinks, acutely unmoving in that way that drops discomfort in your stomach. Not for the first time, you wonder what you're doing here. If you even deserve this. You scratch at your fingers for the distraction and more shove than push the feeling away to the back of your mind. Again.

"Housekeeping," says Genos.

Shock wipes away your clutter of thoughts like a hand swiping papers from a desk.

You reboot from blank like your stuttering laptop blue-screened and singing, mouthing the single word over behind your teeth and tasting its meaning, and then you're laughing because Genos, the Demon Cyborg, in a tiny pink apron with a feather duster—

Your hangnail tears immediate and fast.

At length the pinch is fleeting. But there is your back rimrod straight and the ripped skin pushed up under a bead of blood—

And the storm blowing in. Why, the sky is bearing down so tunneled, isn't it? And the moon has crashed to earth, grey and disconsolate, awakening the darkness of the cold tide to climb into your throat

Something taps sharply against the table. Genos.

"You left," he offers.

"Yeah," you take a shuddering breath. "Sorry. I guess." Your hands are trembling.

Genos doesn't say anything.

The tightness in your chest squeezes wetly. You press your sweaty palms to your mouth, wheezing a short, weak chuckle into your hands. "Go ahead. You're practically vibrating." In all fairness, you're impressed he lasted as long as he did.

"You suffer from haemophobia."

It's a statement, and not a question, but you answer anyway. "Yup."

Genos analyzes you with all the frigid detachment of a professional. "And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"Lay it all out on the table, why don't you?"

"Hmm," he has the decency to look somewhat contrite, but does not apologize.

You sigh. "Look—"

"I also noticed you tend to favour your right leg when you walk."

He's messing with you. He has to be doing this on purpose. Your head yanks up, just managing to catch a slight upturn of his lip before it's gone in the shimmering light, as if it was never there.

"You're not the only one with a tragic backstory." You keep your voice even, vaguely contemplating collecting your things and walking right out of the cafe. It would be too easy. After all, you're sure he wouldn't stop you. Genos is lovely that way.

Dammit. "I have villains of my own."

The second the word villain escapes your mouth, you're instantly reminded that just as Genos is lovely, he is, well, other things.

Not scary. He's never frightened you, you resolve, but his eyes have become sheets of ice in a flash, cutting through you like a laser beam. Never in your life would you have known metal could produce this much expression. But of course Genos is not all metal. Nor is he all human.

Whatever he is, it's not one-dimensional as some believed. You feel like a bug underneath his magnified stare. Genos has very few recognizable emotions outside of fierce severity and determination, sure, but you are irrefutably in tune with the slow clench of his hand under the table. The languid vent of breath expelled into the air.

Genos is angry.

There's nothing stuck in your throat, but it sure feels like there is. "Sorry." You're not sure who you're apologizing for. You need to nip this at the bud. "Don't pity me. You'll find you'll grow exhausted rather quickly."

The calm in his voice is purposely manufactured. Not merely rigid but stern, unyielding. "What monster did this to you?" His expression remains as stoney as ever.

You do not shy away from the alienness of his gaze. Not this time.

"Not everything remotely negative has to do with monsters, Genos." You peer into his upturned face and speak with all the steady, intent clarity of a grand revelation. "Everyday humans make enough evil on their own."

His stare is flat. You hear his silence once more. I know.

All of a sudden, you find yourself exhausted.

The fight drains out of your limbs and ragdolls you, reeking of an odd, sideways frustration that drums behind your temples and leaves a growing headache in its wake. No more social pseudo friendship whatever this is. Right now, you're more burnt out circuit than person. You're going home.

You open your mouth to say as such, but the look in his eyes stops you in your tracks. The fury of before has deserted him; ice is shattered into a thousand wicked edges and fallen into some calmer river, eyes round and glossed over, just barely fringed with pale lashes. The whirring of his fans pick up mentionable speed, saying, here is the wound where the dam bleeds out. Here is the unceremonious alarm shivering over his skin, split between the familiar tones of honesty and something else draped over, blatantly attempting to keep itself from your view.

"What are you holding?" Genos asks, with such uncharacteristic nonchalance your stomach flips over.

"Keys." You eye him. "To my apartment."

He opens a hand expectantly and you only hesitate for a moment before dropping them into his grip. Metal clanks against metal.

Genos takes his sweet time tracing the grooves of your mailbox key. He then reaches for something else.

"This?" He asks, rubbing slow, rhythmic circles as though the thought just presented itself to him, and not as if you'd been watching him bade enough time to ask his real question.

The fabric hanging from your keyring is a gleeful, intimate red, contrasting hot and loud against its dull, rusting neighbours. Devoid of scent or taste. Your hands twitch momentarily, a ghost of muscle remembrance from hours upon hours of washing the scrappy cloth under the whistling faucet. Tireless, relentless scrubbing until the overwhelming stench of blood had swirled down the sink.

"I don't know," you reply truthfully. "A torn piece of cape, I think."

"Who's?"

Latex. Skin, sun-browned and strong and soul-rending, swallowed up by red and yellow, reflected in the millions of particles of hardlight above like the geometric fractures of a stain-coloured church mural. Buried half in shadow. Gold. Golden and worshippable. Breaking sky. A train. Metaphysical screaming. Bending matter bending space bending time. A violent, fundamental break-through ripped from your head like it was forbidden.

"Not sure."

You're not. Life-altering as it may have been, the event was already blurred. You'd only caught a glimpse of the guy. Was it a guy? You weren't certain. The more you think the details over, the more false information weaves itself into the narration and distorts the truth, as memories tend to do. His hair had been blonde, hadn't it? Or were you blinded by the terrifying beauty?

"I took it from the wreckage of the attack last month." Stitched up the frayed ends and punched a hole through the top to slip the ring through. "The funeral you attended?"

"Why?" Comes Genos's next one-syllable question.

Why?

Why. The keepsake is a reminder. It comforts you. Anchors you.

Aggravates you.

"I'm looking for him," you answer simply, slotting your fingers together and resting your chin on top. "Why are you so interested?"

Something strange passes over his face.

"Genos."

"The last book I read," he concludes pleasantly, "was No Longer Human."

If you're jarred by the subject change, it perhaps wouldn't be fair to comment on it. You did the same to him before after all.

"Osamu Dazai," you affirm with a childlike slowness.

"Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness," Genos meets your eyes resolutely. "Everything passes."

"But every time my thoughts reached this point, my desire to speak would vanish." Unblinking, challenging, your chin juts. "And so we remained precisely as we were, making no waves." Your eyes narrow to crinkled slits. "At a standstill."

"Banana Yoshimoto," he replies.

The weight of your eyeballing must be physical. Nonetheless, Genos shuffles the coupons strewn between you and begins talking about low tariffs as if nothing had happened.

You do something you never have.

You let it be.

The rest of the day waxes away with a slow, baleful breath. His lapse of vulnerability vanishes behind the door on his way out, but you remember it long after he's gone into the quiet walk home, in the afterglow of dusk and the small hours gloaming outside your bedroom window as you peruse the hairline cracks on the ceiling, finding yourself unable to fall asleep.

Genos is hiding something from you.


End file.
